Quotes About Belonging

New Brown America represents a whole generation of kids that are descendants of either immigrants or immigrants themselves, that are coming to America, enriching what it means to be an American.

I really just prefer to be exactly who I am, and black is really the closest race and cultural category that represents the essence of who I am.

I reproach so many things about my family, but on the other hand, I kept asking them to be my family.

I represent New York, I represent the Bronx, I represent the Dominican Republic. And I always have that in mind with everything that I do.

I have a very powerful sense of place, but I have a very powerful sense of being a migrant, so it's both. It seems like I'm always leaving my home. That's part of the formula. I love the Dominican Republic. I go back all the time. I love New Jersey. Go back all the time.

When I was living in the Dominican Republic, the local kids became a part of my family.

For my first three books the setting (or place if you will) has always been a given - N.J. and the Dominican Republic and some N.Y.C. - so from one perspective you could say that the place in my work always comes first.

I sometimes think that I didn't leave the Republican Party, as much as it left me.

We're not Democrats first. We're not Republicans first. We're Americans first. We're patriots first.

We may be a nation of Democrats, Independents, and Republicans, but first and foremost we are all human beings and Americans.

Most people don't see themselves as Democrats or Republicans. They see themselves as Americans.

I have to say, after hanging out with Republicans for four days, I want to take a look at my own birth certificate. I don't think I was born in this country.

It was important to me that Beau and Hunter felt our family was whole, and that meant we got to define our relationship, not anyone else.

People are starved for a way of life - they're hunting for a way to be or to act toward the world.

I never really felt like I quite fit in. Other boys were playing sports and into hunting and stereotypically masculine activities. I was always more attracted to the arts. I loved to dance, I loved to sing, and I always knew I would be an actor. I don't really know why.

It wasn't until I went to college and met different people from different areas of life - and then went to San Francisco and met people who really knew who the hell they were - that I kind of caught up in a hurry.

Being part of a community with a church at its centre and singin' hymns is a great thing to do.

I consider myself more a European director who is from Iceland than an Icelandic director.

My ideal destination is a place where my family is; it could be anywhere in the world and it'll still be home.

The local community is very important in one's life; the feelings of identification with a place and people.

I'm identified as a New York actor, I sound like I'm from New York, and I couldn't be more proud of it.

I have always, or for the most part, identified myself as a biracial person.

I didn't have that many black people in my life, so I had to sort of search them out. And I didn't grow up in America, but I identified as much with their writing about the black experience as I did with their writing about the human experience.

Never have I once identified myself as white.